


home is a feeling

by inkedinserendipity



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen, and abrams' and lins' idea of what a hero's death should look like, i.e. anything but what actually happened, in a universe without his captain and his crew, like dying alone and isolated, this colossal disaster required divine intervention to fix, this is a 7k screaming reaction to spock's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 09:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7679572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock of Vulcan is dead. As he does not belong to this world, this splintered universe created by his own mistakes, he chooses to let his <em>katra</em> roam throughout the universe, searching for his captain and his crew. With his final breath, he resigns himself to centuries - millenia, even - of scouring the afterlife. </p><p>It's not going to work. Not even souls can cross the barrier between universes. In fact, very few things can - wormholes, maybe. Ships going through said wormholes, probably. </p><p>Deities, definitely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	home is a feeling

**Author's Note:**

> I was Not Pleased with Spock Prime's atrociously inglorious death. I refuse to accept that he died, condemned to eternal isolation, without even the younger versions of his crew by his side as he passes. Just...absolutely not. No. 
> 
> Thankfully, there's someone else out there in the universe that agrees. And while I am armed nothing but a keyboard, he's got a god.

When Spock awakens, he is no longer on New Vulcan.

This fact alone takes him several seconds to process, a sluggishness he blames on the aging in his eyes and the graying of his hair. Around him, the world is blurry. As he adjusts to his new surroundings - he still possesses a body, _fascinating_ \- the logical deduction appears more and more as though it should have been instantly obvious.

He stands in front of a lake, water tinged faintly lavender, the same hue he recalls from a similar, smaller lake near his house during his youth. Around its shores ring thirty-two separate species of Vulcan-specific, hydrophilic plants, teeming with three-spotted insects, common food of the Sehlat. Their wings fill the air around Spock with a gentle buzzing, the sound amplified by the cluster of gray-lined building several feet behind him. Instead of the relative coolness of New Vulcan, this planet holds the arid heat of a Vulcan desert; no longer is there Starfleet-aided architecture, as this planet replaces it with the buildings of old - the arching curves of ancient Vulcan temples and soaring lines of Vulcan village centers.

The conclusion is inescapable as Spock turns, drinking in his surroundings with slightly-widened eyes: he is on Vulcan.

_Of course_ , Spock thinks several moments later. He is dead. It is only logical that his mind would wish to transport him to one of the locations from which he derives the most comfort before releasing his _katra_ into the vastness of space. It is a near-perfect replica of the Vulcan upon which he was born, centuries ago, save one flaw - behind the sun there are stars, grouped into strange, _wrong_ configurations that are horribly disorienting to Spock's honed senses. It is as though someone had attempted to piece together a replicator without knowing precisely which screws should go where, ending up with a lopsided, haphazardly-constructed pile of metal glinting in the sky, possessing some traces of it intended form but still useless and unfamiliar.

Still, despite the eminently logical reason for which Spock awoke on his home planet (a planet destroyed by his own naivete, his recklessness, his _illogicality_ ), Spock cannot help the staggered breaths that choke at his throat. Still, three years later, he can feel his home planet destroyed - thousands of lives, screaming their anguish to the void of space with the immense power held only by a telepathic race.

He bends on slightly-shaking knees to run his fingers through the Vulcan sand and finds the texture exactly as he remembers it - hot to the touch, coarse, but gentle against his fingerpads as he lets the sand float away through the cracks in his fingers. Even the feeling of the gentle breeze upon his face is exactly as he recalls.

Spock tilts his face back, letting the light of the Vulcan sun wash once more over his face. Truly, this is a sensation that he did not believe he would - that he could - ever feel again.

Spock thinks he can be forgiven the raw emotion which overtakes him.

Half of an hour later, Spock musters the strength to rise again to his feet, pulling himself from his kneeling position on the sand. Struggling to maintain a semblance of cool detachedness, he clasps his hands behind his back. Only when the folds of his ambassadorial robes fail to slide between his palms does Spock think, for the first time, to look down at himself.

His failing mental shields nearly crack for the second time as he sees blue. Oh, it is a shade of blue that he recalls perfectly, even after nearly a century. Against his body rubs the fabric of the Starfleet uniform, the metal insignia restored over his chest, the collar low and brushing gently against his skin.

Before he can react to this revelation, a voice speaks from behind him.

“You know, _mon ami_ , I rather liked this planet. Shame it’s gone.”

Spock certainly does not whip around; rather, he turns to face his companion with all the cool grace befitting a Vulcan. The sudden flapping of his robes behind him is merely a logical byproduct of the wind through the Vulcan plains.

Standing in front of him is a man with whom he has never before made acquaintance. The strange figure is dressed in a rather preposterous red robe with padded shoulders, capped off beautifully with an ornate, garish hat. His garments hold all sort of small items for which Spock cannot ascertain the purpose - buttons on the sleeve, holding nothing together; a Starfleet insignia down by his hipbone, as opposed its usual place higher on the torso; a bow made of glistening metal beneath a large golden chain that hangs around his neck.

“Very nice home planet you got here,” the being continues, nodding sagaciously. “Wonderful sunsets. No moonrises, though. That must be a huge downside.”

“I do not believe that we have met,” Spock begins, instinctively shoving his (entirely justifiable, thank you) emotional reactions aside to form the _ta’al_. “I am Spock of Vulcan.”

“I know who you are, Spock of the _Enterprise_ ,” the man says boredly. Belatedly, Spock realizes that the man’s feet do not make contact with the ground; rather, he floats arbitrarily several feet above the plains of sand. He is currently engaged inspecting his fingernails with a bored eye, rather than turning his attention to Spock. How rude.

“And what might be your name?”

The man uses his thumbpad to wipe away some invisible irregularity on the pointer finger of his other hand. “Q.”

One of Spock’s eyebrows arches. “Q?”

“Q. That’s what I call me, that’s what everyone calls me, so that’s what you’ll call me as well, Mr. Spock.” He uses the pointer finger to level it at Spock. “And you, by the way, are dead.”

Spock allows the barest flicker of amusement to light the corner of his lips. “That much I gathered.”

Q flatters him with a brief look of surprise before his eyebrows settle into insufferable knowingness. “Of course. Being Vulcan, such a conclusion was only _logical_.”

Spock’s second eyebrow raises to join the first. “Indeed,” he replies slowly, trying to puzzle out the being before him. Humanoid build, distinctly human face. Spock would decisively conclude that Q were a human, if not for the man’s eyes. Where most humans are quite easily read, broadcasting their emotions for all to see, this man shows nothing; not by mental means nor through physical tells. There is nothing in his eyes. Nothing but a blank absence that unnerves Spock more than he has words to explain.

Q drifts closer over the dunes, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back on the air currents that tug him closer to Spock. “So where do you suppose you are, _mon ami_?”

“Vulcan,” Spock replies promptly. “And I believe that, even for humans, to call another one’s friend so close to the initial meeting is unsubtle. Frowned-upon, even.”

Q's eyes gleam. “Empirically correct. But how little you truly know, Spock of the _Enterprise_. For example, you are not truly on Vulcan, though you have already surmised as such. And...how to put this delicately. Well, Mr. Spock, I am not human.”

Spock frowns, wondering briefly if Doctor McCoy has summoned some distant relative to haunt him with infernal, illogical jokes. “You bear a close physical resemblance to their species.”

Q laughs. The low-pitched, rumbling sound only deepens the sense of anxiety building in Spock’s stomach, as though he faces a Terran hurricane with nothing between himself and the winds save a flimsy aluminum shield. 

Behind him, a group of Sehlat trudge across the distant plains, eyeing the two figures warily. Something about the Sehlat gives Spock pause. Their faces seem...off. He peers closer.

Their eyes are blank.

“How much you think you know! For so slow-witted a species, though, I cannot say that I am surprised. This, _mon ami_ , is my preferred form,” Q explains, winking.

Though humans use winks for many purposes, as Spock has discovered over his many years in the company of humanity, this one does not seem to belie so innocent an intention as the ones used for, say, flirting.

“Slow-witted?”

“Quite.” Idly, as if bored, Q flicks his wrist. Behind him, clouds congeal into the form of the _ta’al_. “To rid oneself of emotions? Ha! As if.”

Spock’s expression remains steadily neutral. Q raises an eyebrow at him, then frowns disappointedly. The _ta’al_ vanishes with a sigh on the wind, reflected by a more audible one falling from Q’s lips.

“I’d almost rather you more human,” Q says, and yes, he is pouting. “Most people react far more interestingly. You never know how creatively people can curse until something unbelievable happens. Or something tragic.”

“My condolences for your disappointment,” Spock says, dipping his head in a grave farce of regret. “If only I could adequately shelve my emotions to properly entertain.”

Q stares at him for a long, long moment. For the first time since he appeared, the strange being is completely still - no longer does he bounce between air currents, arch an eyebrow, pick lint from his nails. Despite the other man’s smaller stature, Spock finds himself uncomfortable. It is the eyes, Spock concludes for the second time; somehow, they are even more disconcerting than the blank ones of the Sehlat. At least there were emotions upon those faces. Upon Q’s, now, he can read none - and he is struck with the distinct feeling that this being chooses the emotions he shows carefully, plucking out the impression he wants others to feel as humans pick ripened grapes from their plates.

“You know, this form can get boring," Q announces suddenly, eyes never leaving Spock's. "In fact, I’m bored right now. I’m going to pick a different one.”

Spock does not even have time to be nervous before the man’s form flickers off and back on, with all the rapidity of an automatic light aboard the _Enterprise_. When Spock blinks away his surprise, Amanda Grayson stands in front of him.

Spock’s head begins to pound strangely, her face swimming in front of his eyes. He has to swallow several times before he can form words. 

“That is a face that I...that I have not seen for many years,” he croaks between constricting lungs.

Another flash, and Q reappears, wiping away his mother’s face as easily as one would swat a fly from the air. He is wearing a smile, pulled tight over his face like a mask. Spock feels cold. “Of course not. She’s long-dead, after all.”

Spock’s face tightens against the obvious emotional assault on his conscience. He tries desperately to maintain an even tone as he asks, “What is your purpose here?” as though he could disguise his slamming heart from such an unnerving - almost omnipotent - being.

The being across from him looks insufferably smug. “Why, Mr. Spock, to present to you a choice, obviously. This is what typically happens to mortals in the presence of gods.”

The words send Spock reeling, and he would doubt the man upon principle, save for his mother’s face, paltry seconds earlier staring warmly at him.

The self-proclaimed deity pulls a nail filer out of nowhere and returns to his impromptu manicure. “This is how these things go, Mr. Spock: I give you a choice, you make your choice, you leave happily. Or unhappily, depending on what you choose.” Q looks up, straight into Spock’s eyes. “But you will make the correct choice, won’t you, Mr. Spock? Logic is, of course, the guiding principle of Vulcans.”

“And yet I am only half-Vulcan, Mr. Q.”

Q blinks once, twice, then something akin to a smile appears on his face. Not the ostentatious, stage-dramatic smile so frequent on his face for the past twenty minutes; rather, a more genuine one that belies surprise. “Well then,” the deity claps his hands, eyes lighting up. “This should be rather more easy than I anticipated! Follow me, Spock of the _Enterprise_. I have something to show you. Also, Spock. Just Q, please. ‘Mister’ makes me feel old.”

With that, Q turns and floats toward the lake.

Spock stares openly at his back as he drifts away. The air around him is warm and comforting, and there is so much to explore - if this is truly Vulcan, then perhaps this would not be a terrible place upon which to spend the rest of eternity. For a moment, he turns his back on the god called Q and studies the buildings behind him.

They are vibrant, filled to the brim with nostalgia - though he did not live on this part of Vulcan, the sight brings back memories. The Vulcan Science Academy, the companions - however impartial - he met there; his father, in his ambassadorial prime; his beloved I-Chaya; his mother and her baking and her sweet, gentle voice.

“Mr. Spock,” a voice sighs, mere inches from his neck. Spock surmises that he has been spending far too much time with young Jim and the less elderly Doctor McCoy, because he can hardly tamp down on a shocked jolt.

Q is no longer moving away from him, as he presumed the deity would continue to do. Instead, Q hovers directly next to his face, lying on his side, legs crossed and relaxed. “Why on Vulcan are you delaying, Mr. Spock?”

“I am contemplating.” Spock gestures with one old, wrinkled hand to the Vulcan city glittering enticingly under the sun. “This place offers warmth. Besides,” he continues dryly, looking Q in the face, “I am assaulted with the suspicion that, should I follow you, I will not know peace and solitude for some time.”

Q claps, and as he claps, hands of sand protrude from the ground and clap with him, magnifying his approval several times. Thunderously. Loud enough to cause hearing damage. Then, as Spock fails to react, Q waves his hands sharply downward. The rhythmic thudding of sand on sand ceases instantly. “Very well deduced, Mr. Spock." His smile turns feral. "You are entirely correct. Should you follow me, you will not know peace for a long, _long_ time.”

“Why, then, should I follow you, if I know not to where you go nor to whom you lead me?”

Q’s eyes glisten. The hands of sand disintegrate into lifeless piles. “Because it is for adventure that you _live_ , Mr. Spock. Even stranded in another universe, far from friends, home and family, you never stopped searching for it. You crave it, just as you crave to see once again your captain and your crew.”

Spock feels vaguely like he’s been punched in the gut. “My captain?” he repeats, endeavoring desperately to keep his voice as neutral as possible. He does not find much success.

“Ah, there we are,” Q comments, pleased. “See, now I have your attention! Ah ah ah,” he interrupts Spock’s next question, shaking both of his fingers and his head in Spock’s direction. “No spoilers! Follow me, Mr. Spock. Or, if you prefer, remain here forever.” The deity shrugs. “Your choice either way.”

This time, when Q floats away, Spock follows him.

The lake is, apparently, not as close as Spock originally believed it to be. Where it looked perhaps fifty meters away from his original position at best, walking for ten minutes does not decrease the separation between himself, Q, and the purplish waters. His strides do nothing to bring him closer; instead, it seems as though more sand appears underfoot with every step he takes.

By his side, Q is humming. A strange tune, not one with which Spock is familiar, but jaunty and upbeat. If arrogance could create a song, Spock thinks wryly, this would be it.

“Rude.”

Spock blinks. Q does not look at him, staring straight ahead. “Pardon?”

“That was quite rude. My arrogance is more than warranted, Mr. Spock.”

More than a small bit shaken, Spock adds _mind-reading_ to the list of abilities that Q apparently possesses. Obviously, this being has no regard for Vulcan customs regarding the privacy of the mind, nor the strength of Spock’s mental shields. (Which, admittedly, are considerably frayed by the - dare he say it - emotional turmoil of finding himself so unexpectedly on his home planet; but still, he felt not even the whisper of another mind against his own.)

Suddenly, as if the shore was taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Spock’s legs hit water. For the second time in as many minutes, he blinks in surprise.

“Here we are!” Q announces cheerfully. “Now, stick your head in the water, if you please, Mr. Spock.”

Spock’s words seem to pull from the dryness of the arid Vulcan air, deadpan and biting. “Are you going to drown me should I comply, Mr. Q?”

Q’s eyes slit, for the first time revealing a flash of anger. “Why I help you mortals, I have no idea. Mr. Spock, your choice lies inside the pool," he hisses sharply. "Take it or leave it, accept or decline, the farce of choice is yours.” He waves an airy hand. “Matters not to me what you do.”

Spock takes a deep breath, blindly hoping that Q does not decide that killing him in the afterlife would make a sporting exercise, and submerges his face in the water.

In the span of an instant, Spock sees many things. He sees himself, a hundred years younger, in a darkened room with two Vulcan elders, creating the _ta’al_ and whispering the benediction characteristic of their race, and it is only because he is Spock and Spock is he that the older can see the pain in his eyes; just before Spock powers off the holo-pad he catches a glimpse of his own face, wrinkled and dignified and deceased, and his heart twinges for the younger version of himself.

Then the _Enterprise_ ’s voyage into the nebula; her destruction, the stranding of the crew; young Uhura’s bold defiance of Krall, Sulu’s chin lifted against the warped mind; himself, gravely injured but coping as best he can, the young Doctor’s concern obvious even through his prickly exterior. Young Jim’s foolish plan to recover his crew, Scotty speaking to the alien called Jaylah, convincing her that the _Enterprise_ is (and forever shall be, forever shall be, _forever_ ) a family.

The prison break, the re-launch of the _U.S.S. Franklin_ , the battle for Yorktown, Jim’s declination of Admiralty and the party afterward with Nyota and her necklace of vulcanite and all of them, reunited and together, staring into the vastness of space -

Then, there is nothing but stars.

Spock looks around himself, disoriented from the visions beamed into his head like insistent blinking lights, no more lasting or decipherable than foreign Morse. For several seconds he struggles to assimilate the information until finally, his admittedly formidable mind grasps the import of this series of events. He would call the visions a mind-meld, except there is no one from whom the visions could have come; in this strange, cold vastness, he is alone.

All around him, stars twinkle peacefully in the sky. For a moment, Spock can almost believe that he is once more in the Observation Deck of the _Enterprise_ , the captain pressed against his arm, the Doctor by his side, all breathing the same air as they speak of space.

“You are your _katra_ ,” Q explains, and Spock certainly does not roll his eyes, because of course the childish deity would accompany him. Just when he believed he was alone. “ In this form, you will decide. 

"The first of your two options: remain in the splinter universe you have created as a disembodied likeness of your former self. You could aid, could provide suggestions, to the crew of this universe,” Q explains, shrugging. “The potential for the good you could do is limited only by the strength of your soul.”

“How would I help?”

Q does a small flip in the air, hair waving lazily behind him. “Whispers implanted in their minds. Like a human haunting, Mr. Spock, except much more...vague.”

Spock’s lips curl in distaste. An unappealing scenario, indeed. “And the second option?”

Q pulls out of his twirling to stand next to Spock, crossing his arms behind his back in a parody of the half-Vulcan’s stance. Honestly, had Spock not seen evidence to the contrary, he might think Q a child.

“ _Adventure_ , Mr. Spock,” Q says grandly, as though this is all the explanation he needs. “Not a second’s rest, nor a moment’s peace. Ongoing, eternal chaos.”

“Hell,” Spock summarizes shortly. He easily admits to bafflement. “What sort of choice is this?”

“Mr. Spock,” Q says, placing an offended hand on his chest. “I would never offer such an obvious choice.”

“Explain,” Spock says, not a command but not quite a suggestion, either.

“But that would ruin the fun.” Between breaths, Q continues humming that infernal tune. “The point is for _you_ to decide, Mr. Spock! What is your choice - eternal peace and eternal chaos? Which seems more _logical_?”

“This is no choice,” Spock refutes. For some reason, his heart thuds heavily in his chest, adrenaline as he has not felt in many years coursing through his veins. “There are too many unknown variables for me to make an adequate decision.”

“Quitter’s words, Spock of the _Enterprise_ ,” Q reprimands, shaking his head. “And here I was, expecting better.”

“You are asking me to choose between a life floating, untethered, outside the Katric Arc in this universe, and one during which I will suffer eternally,” Spock summarizes dryly. “However you may spin these choices, one is clearly more advantageous than the other.”

“Hmmm.” Q strokes his bare chin idly with one hand, and with a flick of the other soars up and over Spock’s head, performing impossible cartwheels in the zero-G of space. With nothing off of which to push, Spock finds himself entirely immobile. Or perhaps that is because this part of space is nothing more than illusion, he ponders briefly, a place in which Q and he can speak, uninterrupted. Regardless, he finds that flips of any sort are entirely outside of his range of capability. “I suppose that’s not much of a choice then, is it, Mr. Spock? Unfortunately, I cannot say much more.”

“About what?”

“Why, your options, of course.” Q levels him with an unimpressed glare. “I was under the impression you could carry an intelligent conversation.”

“Apparently, my abilities extend only to certain conversation partners.”

“Clearly.” Then, suddenly, Q’s face lights up with realization, and he smacks himself on the forehead. His hand goes through his head and sticks out the back temporarily before returning to an anatomically possible position. “Though I forgot to correct you on one teensy-weensy little detail, Mr. Spock. Well, two. First, allow me to disillusion you of the possibility of transuniversal mobility in the afterlife. It is impossible." Q grins. "Well, for mortals. And, possibly more importantly - eternal suffering is rather...drastic for what the second choice would bring you. You connotate chaos as a bad thing - an entirely human response. Understandable, because you have lived amongst humans for quite some time, but ultimately illogical.”

“Then please, Mr. Q, educate me on its other meanings.”

Q’s eyes glint. “Oh, I really shouldn’t say,” he says, placing a hand to his forehead and closing his eyes dramatically. His outfit changes from gaudy robes to a fluttering, pink gown. The satin wraps around the stars themselves and appears to reel them in, imbuing his dress with thousands of glittering points. “But for you, Mr. Spock, I may just have to make an exception.

“The first choice will, of course, return you to New Vulcan - your point of death - so that you may continue infinitely as a meaningless ghost, struggling to change a future which you cannot predict, pining after the life you could have led, etcetera etcetera. The second will bring you...well, will bring you home. To chaos and destruction and really, not a _moment’s_ rest, but...home.”

Both of Spock’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. “Discord and strife on old Vulcan?” he asks disbelievingly. “Vulcans have long since discarded the Ancient Ways.”

Something causes Q to smirk, that insufferable grin growing larger and larger. Spock is reminded forcibly of the Cheshire cat from the Terran book his mother read him long ago, full of impossibilities and rabbit holes and queens made of cards. At the time, however he was loathe to admit it to anyone save himself, the book intrigued him. He wondered how anyone’s imagination could be so ripe as to produce such a fascinating world.

Later, he met James T. Kirk, and no longer needed to wonder.

“Take all the time you need,” Q calls airily, clearly resolving to divulge no further details. When Spock looks up from his musings, he sees Q lying on his stomach, facing Spock from above his head, drifting away into the stars. One by one, he returns them to their original places, fluttering out from his dress and back to the locations from which they came. His robes return in patches of red on pink. “When you have chosen, Spock, call my name, and we shall discuss. Until then, toodles!”

“Wait!” Spock calls. “Why are you doing this?”

The deity sighs, as if trying and failing to remove a burr from the side of his atrocious robes. One more thing for Spock to cross off his mental catalogue of presumed impossibilities, the sight of a god expressing so human an emotion. “So many questions,” he tuts. “A friend of mine asked a favor,” Q explains in a tone of voice that suggests that this friend was anything but. “I owed him, of course. Though why he chose to spend his favor on you, I do not know.”

“Who is this?” Jim, perhaps, from another timeline? Impossible - there are only two James T. Kirks who know of his existence: one of whom is dead and the other of whom has never so much as mentioned this enigmatic being.

“You do not know him, _mon ami_ ,” Q explains, still floating away. “Though I get the feeling,” Q continues wryly, “that were you two to meet, you would get along quite well. He rather enjoys his Shakespeare.”

“What -”

Somehow, despite the fact that Q is literally disappearing from Spock’s line of vision, his voice grows no quieter. “Make your choice, Spock of the _Enterprise_ ,” Q commands, then vanishes entirely from the starry sky.

Home.

Gazing at the stars, wrapped in the silence of space, Spock turns the word in his mind. Where is home, exactly?

Vulcan, of course. From Vulcan came his father, his father’s fathers, his father’s father’s fathers, continuing hence until Surak, the first. From Vulcan came the traditions upon which he was raised, his pets and his acquaintances, the methodology so installed in his brain, his passion for science and love of life. From Vulcan came nearly all the knowledge he now possesses.

It was to Vulcan which he was born, and to Vulcan his _katra_ will return. By all definitions of the word, Vulcan is his birthing place, his resting place, and everything in between; the place to which he has devoted the last five years of his life, where he sought solace in the acolytes of Gol, and on the shores of Vulcan he was resurrected. On the shores of Vulcan, he was reborn into the arms of his crew.

But Vulcan did not motivate him to join Starfleet. It was not Vulcan that drove him to the _Enterprise_ , to Doctor McCoy and his Captain. It was not Vulcan, nor its people, who embraced the half of Spock that he had tried to conceal for so long.

Home.

By definition, the place where one lives. Previously, Vulcan. More recently, New Vulcan.

Neither of those feel like home.

It is not a sentiment to which Spock can put words, other than an entirely emotional wrongness that tells him that Vulcan is not his home. A feeling, strong and undeniable, that lodges itself in his chest, right over his half-Vulcan, half-human heart. Perhaps Vulcan was his home, years ago; upon his birth, childhood and the adolescence spent exploring Vulcan’s rocky plains, the dry deserts and the scientific wonders of the Vulcan collective; but now, something is different.

Something changed Spock, many years ago. No longer is Vulcan his home. 

With a burgeoning sense of wonder, Spock realizes - it was his crewmates that taught him to thrive in space; it was his friends who encouraged him, who accepted him as he was, never asked him to be more Vulcan or human than he could; his family, who showed him that perhaps - _perhaps_ \- there was more to life than the Vulcan Way.

It was his crew who rescued him from the madness of his Time, mourned his passing and, ultimately, carried his _katra_ to Vulcan, to see him live once again.

Spock had assumed that he was reborn into the arms of home - Vulcan.

But it was not Vulcan for whom he fought off the shackles of death.

“Q, I have decided,” Spock announces, after thirty-or-so minutes of silence. It is a testament to his dilemma that his internal chronometer cannot rattle off the precise minutes and seconds of his period of contemplation.

In an instant, Q appears by his side, again minding his nails. “Well?” the deity demands with little preamble.

Spock folds his hands together, letting the Starfleet uniform rub reassuringly against his wrists. “I have chosen to return home.”

Q blinks at him. “And where might that be, Spock of the _Enterprise_?” His smirk, however all-knowing, seems almost...fond.

Already, Spock can feel himself shifting. Against each other, the skin of his hands smoothens, the lines of his face melting away, the points of his ears lengthening. The gray of his hair recedes, his eyelids pulling back slightly to reveal youthful half-Vulcan, half-human eyes. Once more, the Starfleet uniform fits perfectly around his body, melding to his contours like an embrace. He feels as he did long ago. He feels new again, as he did when the dynamo known as James T. Kirk whirled through the _Enterprise_ , shattering the shell under which Spock had isolated himself and bringing him forcefully into the chaotic, tumultous, human world of emotions, of friendship and love.

Spock inhales deeply in the vastness of space. Thousands of stars twinkle all around him, and even as he closes his eyes to taste the sweet smell of space, he can see them dancing against the back of his eyelids, twirling and beckoning.

To boldly go, he thinks, where no one has gone before.

“The _Enterprise_ ,” he speaks, and in his mouth the word sounds like a prayer.

Q’s eyes gleam. “Congratulations!” he beams, and this time, he forms the secondary hands out of cluster of stars, which slam together with booming applause. The sound reverberates around Spock’s ears painfully, but he shoves down the impulse to cover them, standing straight and tall beneath the auditory assault. “Stand still, Mr. Spock. I won’t promise that this won’t be painful, but we wouldn’t want you wriggling around and losing an arm in transport, now would we?”

Q’s eyeing him with that smug look he’s worn throughout the entire exchange. Where previously, it was nettling, now it is more amusing than anything else. This deity is reminiscent, eerily so, of a Terran child.

As Spock lets his arms rest behind his back, his stance unconsciously widening, Q mutters an irascible “I heard that.”

“I know,” Spock replies easily, allowing his eyebrows to relax just a fraction.

The world around him begins to collapse. Slowly, slowly, the stars surrounding them move inward, as if each were attached to a string pulled toward Spock’s chest.

“Good luck, Spock of the _Enterprise_.”

Even as his movements slow and his vision dims, Spock forms the _ta’al_. He foregoes, for the second time in his long, long life, the usual Vulcan farewell - to a deity, wishes for a long life seem rather redundant.

“Thank you, Q,” he says instead, and feels nothing more.

Aboard the _Enterprise_ , in another life, Counselor Deanna Troi jolts awake from a midafternoon nap on the Bridge. Upon looking up, she finds Captain Jean-Luc Picard immersed in a copy of Shakespeare with the smuggest grin she’s ever seen on his face, radiating enough satisfaction and joy to turn an army of Romulans to pacifists.

“Captain?” she queries, slightly incredulous at the ridiculous intensity of the Captain’s current emotions.

“Nothing to worry about,” he responds quietly, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Of course not, you’re smiling large enough to split your face. What happened?”

He looks up from her, the eye contact only intensifying the flood of happiness she can sense. It’s practically bouncing off the Bridge. “A balance has been restored,” he says cryptically, and with a wink, returns to his Shakespeare.

He does not stop grinning for three hours hence.

When Spock awakens, he is no longer standing amidst a field of stars.

Entirely inadvertently, his breath catches in his throat and stays there. He cannot breathe. These are the walls of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_ , gleaming as they did the first day of their five-year mission. Those, the buttons of the control panel. Beneath his feet, the ridges from which erupts the transporter beam, forming a perfect hexagon, a pattern replicated above his head.

Spock cannot keep his hands crossed neutrally behind his back. He reaches toward the walls and finds them just as smooth, cool and polished, as he remembers. The number four, on the walls, still blazoned in proud red; the doors, swooshing open with a mechanical sound that haunts him like a long-forgotten lullaby; the corridors, still striped with gray; the lights, the same constant beaming as before; the floor, still firm and unyielding beneath his feet.

Slowly, slowly, Spock winds through the corridors of the _Enterprise_ , strides unconsciously tracing familiar steps through the snakelike halls. He passes the Observation Deck, Recreation Lounge 4 (there are chess boards, still, just as he and Jim used to play). From his side melt hundreds of slots, some doors to private quarters, some hatches to Jeffrey tubes, some panels leading to escape pods. And throughout his journey, the _Enterprise_ is exactly as his eidetic memory supplies.

Eventually, after he has passed through half of the ship at least, his steps halt outside the turbolift to the Bridge. Two steps, and he will be on his way. Two steps lie between him and his crew, his family, his friends.

Two steps have never quite seemed so insurmountable.

Spock of the _Enterprise_ has never been one prone to anxiety. He faces most crises with a level head and what Doctor McCoy would term an organic database between two pointed ears. For missions, he reserves detached logic and a rapid mind; on the ship, a dry sense of humor that appeals to his human crewmates.

Worry such as this has flooded his mind once, maybe twice: upon the Captain’s long, too-long submergence in the San Francisco Bay; and that cursed, unforgettable moment during which he realized that his plan to unite Romulus and Vulcan would fail.

Spock takes a deep breath, feeling the collar of his uniform rest comfortingly against his clavicle, and steps into the turbolift.

The ride up the turbolift to the Bridge from Deck Four lasts twenty-three point four seconds. This is a fact, and Spock knows it well. Yet for the first time, he understands the common human saying that “it felt longer”, even though there is no chronological difference. To every part of Spock save his chronometer, the whirring of the lift seems indefinite.

The turbolift dings cheerfully, a generic female voice announcing his arrival on the Bridge, and the doors hiss open, and immediately, there is chaos.

“Spock!” say about four different voices at the same time, and then there is Sulu and Chekov, young again (so different from how he last remembers them on Earth, gray in their hair and wrinkles on their faces, tension in their hands from working behind a desk, looking ruefully up at the stars and wishing, wishing as he did, _I’d want to go back_ ). Both latch onto his shoulders, shaking him excitedly, and for the first time, Spock feels the urge to return the contact; he wraps them both in a long-armed hug, which they return gleefully, still hollering about him being "on ze Bridge again, this is the best day of my _life_!"

They don't seem to want to detach, neither of them, but Spock finally nudges his armful of goldshirts away from his chest to make room for Uhura. Patient woman that she is, Uhura waits her turn before taking Spock’s hands gently and wishing him a welcome - “Welcome home, Spock,” she says, and he believes he will remember her words forever - and pulling him closer until her head rests against her chest.

It is obvious that Uhura has rubbed off on Scotty as well, for he waits for her to lean back before practically lifting him off the floor in a massive bear hug. Well, he grabs Uhura as well, but she doesn't seem to mind. The sheer strength in their Chief Engineer nearly tears the breath from Spock’s lungs, but he finds that he does not care one bit.

All around him, the emotions are overwhelming. Relief, joy, affection - all so strong, he nearly finds himself weeping at the thought. For he can feel them too, these emotions, from those four whom he believed he would never see again. He never understood the human tendency to cry from happiness, but now...it is conceivable.

The Bridge is warm. All four of them step back, grinning openly, to allow him a moment to re-acclimate, back on board the _Enterprise_. His Science Station, vacated; although Chekov should fill it in cases of Spock’s absence, he notes, the thin film of dust over the buttons suggests that he has not followed that particular regulation to the letter.

And in front of them, through the viewing station on the Bridge, there are stars.

Spock stares openly, gazing through the viewfinder. It is a view he has wanted for so long - for _so long_...

There is a _click_ like the depressing of a button behind him, but he is too distracted by the sight to fully process the noise through his admittedly-formidable Vulcan hearing. “It eez a beautiful sight, is it not, Mr. Spock?” Chekov asks, stepping forward to stand at his right.

“Indeed it is, Lieutenant,” Spock agrees quietly.

“Anywhere we want to go, we can take her.” Sulu pats his navigation console with all the confident carelessness of someone who has spent so long in a certain place that they know exactly how any touch will affect it. “We’ve got the crew, the ship, the whole universe.”

“There’s much left still to explore,” Uhura says, brushing her shoulder against his. “Even here, there is much unknown.” She flashes him a gorgeous smile. “The work never quite ends, does it?”

“Aye, and she’s right fit for ‘bout anythin’, too.” Scotty’s proud burr fills the air on his other side. “Great thing about bein’ dead is that there aren’t any Starfleet regulations tellin’ me I can’t make my lady as beautiful as she deserves to be.”

Spock hums, filling the air with his own contentment. “And the rest of the crew?”

“Sleeping. It’s gamma shift, but we relieved them for today.” There’s a knowing twinkle in Uhura’s eyes. “Something about a strange transmission telling us that we would be receiving a visitor.”

“From whom?”

“Ah, that we don’ know.” There’s a frown line between Scotty’s eyes. “Just said it was from Data, but that doesn’ make any sense - no way inanimate numbers kin form a message like tha’.”

Scotty does not realize, but there is the capital-letter-inflection on the word Data. Spock wonders briefly if, whoever they are, they enjoy Shakespeare.

For a long moment there is nothing but the five of them, shoulder-to-shoulder, filling the Bridge once more.

Well. Nearly filling the Bridge. There is still something missing.

He turns to ask, but Uhura’s words still him before he can say a thing. “They’re on their way, Commander,” she says, eyes glinting with amusement. She pulls a communicator from behind her back, showing him for the first time the gentle green pulsing from the device, doubtless echoed by another communicator elsewhere.

As if waiting for her cue, the doors to the turbolift open. Spock turns, and once more he finds the air aboard ship too thin, too hard to fill his lungs, to properly breathe.

“Well, if it ain’t the hobgoblin,” Doctor McCoy mutters under his breath, irascible in death as in life. He crosses the Bridge with long strides - almost eager - all the same, and stops just short of Spock. McCoy looks the same as Spock remembers from the first years of their mission, from the clean-shaven cheeks to the irritable expression above eyes with bags traced underneath to the science blues echoed on Spock’s own chest. “You were takin’ ages, Spock. We were startin’ to think Vulcans were immortal on top of everythin’ else!”

Spock’s laugh is slightly watery, but he finds that he does not mind. “As you well know, Doctor, while our _katra_ are immortal, our bodies, unfortunately, are not.”

“Unfortunately, my sainted aunt,” the Doctor grumbles. He steps forward to poke Spock in the chest - a gesture that, as Spock has learned, functions as an embrace does for any other human. “D’you know how many times I’ve had to save your green-blooded behind because y’all aren’t as invulnerable as you seem to think? Do you? Ain’t never had a good day’s rest in my life. Well, non-life.”

“And now you never will,” says the very last voice.

He steps from the turbolift. Bones moves aside, his irritation flowing freely off of his face, replaced by the gruff sort of warmth with which he lectures his wayward Commanding Officers.

Spock has to physically close his eyes against the rush of _happiness_ that bubbles in his chest.

It is as if the crew of the Bridge understand what Spock is going through at this very moment, because they step away, smiles not faltering an inch. When Spock opens his eyes again, there he is, just as Spock remembers him before his final, fatal voyage: the Captain of the _Enterprise_.

“Hello, Spock,” the voice continues quietly, soft and golden, melodic to his ears.

“Hello, Jim,” Spock replies shakily.

His Captain beams, the expression just as Spock remembers, the way he always does when Spock uses his first name. Without further ado, Spock finds himself in the middle of - and returning - the gentlest embrace he has received.

At this point, he should not be surprised; in life as in death, Captain James T. Kirk was considerate of Spock’s boundaries, and even now he is careful, wrapping his arms around his old friend as he would treat something precious, irreplaceable.

Spock closes once his eyes at the unadulterated joy radiating off his Captain in waves, and sinks into the embrace. Even now, even after so long, his chin still fits perfectly against Jim’s shoulder, and Jim’s hands are firm and warm against his back.

“Welcome home, Spock,” says Jim, his Captain, his _t'hy'la_ , and Spock smiles, a real true smile that hurts his cheeks to maintain, because he is.

After a century of searching, he is home.


End file.
